Minnesota Twins Sign Catcher Kurt Suzuki

Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports

The puzzle that is the Minnesota Twins newly retooled roster is starting to resemble a major league team again. On Friday morning, it was reported that the Minnesota Twins had signed seven year veteran Kurt Suzuki.

Susan Slusser is the Oakland A’s beat writer for the San Francisco Chronicle and also passed along this note:

For the record, at the time of publishing Kurt Suzuki’s Twitter account had not posted anything about his new team.

Rhett Bolinger reports that the deal is $2.75 million plus some incentives.

The move signals that the club was not totally sold on the idea of Josmil Pinto catching the majority of the games for the Twins. Most likely, Suzuki will be the Twins main backstop for the first part of the season while mentoring Pinto.

Suzuki is 30 years-old and is right-handed. His career averages are .253/.309/.375/.685 (BA, OBP, SLG, OPS). He is considered to be a pretty good defensive catcher with a lifetime fielding percentage if .933. The one caveat to that is that Suzuki has trouble throwing out base stealers with only a caught stealing percentage of 26%.

Suzuki has played in seven MLB seasons and has been traded twice but he has only played for two teams. Suzuki started his career with the Oakland A’s where he played from 2007 until partway through 2012 when he was traded to the Washington Nationals. Partway through 2013 the Nats sent him back to the A’s.

Here’s a little humor to brighten up your Friday. This message brought to us by proven closer Glen Perkins who pretty much killed it: